The latest pass through Book One finds me simplifying prose in the edit. I write genre fiction; it’s all about clarity.
As an author, you want readers to follow along, to understand what you wrote, and why it matters. You want to hold their attention and capture their imagination. Clarity is key. The reader has to stop to untangle one of your sentences, that’s a fail. They have to pull up a dictionary to check an unfamiliar word, that’s a fail. If the prose steals the spotlight as the star of the show and not the characters, plot or ideas, that’s a fail.
Big Word, Small Word
With each pass, I simplify the vocabulary. That doesn’t mean dumb down the text, it means use fewer exotic, poly-syllabic words and stick with the common core that most English speakers use everyday. One research paper found that in English, 3000 words fulfill 95% of common speech and media across spoken conversation, newspapers, and novels. That’s far fewer than the often-quoted 20,000 word vocabulary of an average ‘mature’ adult.
Sure, you can show off your linguistic range and diversity, but if it loses your average reader, what’s the point? Literary fiction reaches for a high bar in composition. The wider you reach across the mass-market – and that includes genre fiction – the bar has to lower. A good novel in polished Middle Grade prose will sell to adults, teenagers and children. Genre readers want an engaging read, not a literature exam.
In practical terms, replace uncommon, fancy words with common ones, even if it’s two short words in place of one long one. In today’s edit:
- Subterfuge became deception.
- Dissolved became melted away.
Substituting more common, more comprehensible words strengthens the prose.
Less of the Shop Talk
By shop talk, we mean jargon words; technical language; specialist knowledge. My fantasy fiction could easily disappear down a rabbit-hole of arms and armour. I can get very specific about types of swords, daggers, arrowheads, pieces of armour. Do you know what a baldric is? A coif? A hauberk? Such depth of knowledge is great for the armchair enthusiast, not for the casual reader. Greaves and bracers, for example; I have to qualify and explain what they are, how and where they’re worn. Most readers don’t care. Most want to get on with the story. Give them enough hints to go on, they’ll imagine the rest.
Immaculate Construction
I’m on a mission to write simpler sentences. Having learned all that writing craft, I’m now taking out run-on sentences, cumulative sentences and anything with more than one subordinate clause. None of Thomas Hardy’s single sentences that fill a whole paragraph.
A previous post mentions types of writing. There’s literary writing that draws attention to itself and the admiration of the reader. Too much of this tips into Purple Prose. I much prefer invisible prose that the reader sees through to the story. That doesn’t mean it’s poorly written, bland, unexceptional; it can stand up to critical analysis. It just doesn’t scream ‘look at me, how artful and clever I am.’
Affirmative action
I’m trying to increase the accuracy and strength of meaning in my prose. Fewer, well-chosen and apposite words in tightly structured prose. But this isn’t how most people talk in naturalistic dialogue. I cut the filler words, the errs’, the ‘ums’, the ‘wells,’ that create noise on the page.
But I keep vernacular words in speech; mostly, kind of, maybe. Common people of average intelligence and education qualify their statements in all kinds of ways. More so in informal registers of speech, and in mixed company. Rare individuals stand out by their use of confident, unqualified statements. More on that later.
More crutch words
Lastly, I return to the ever-growing list of crutch words. On this latest trawl of my MS, it turns out two of my favourite crutch words are as and yet.
I have too many instances of ‘as.’
Something happened as something else happened.
Not just repetitive and dull, that’s poor judgement of pace; too many things happening at the same time. They rarely do. Rarely, an only in action sequences where the pace is fast. Otherwise, something happens then the next thing happens; not everything, everywhere all at once.
What else? Yet another, yet more. Just say another, or more. The other use case? And yet… to introduce a juxtaposition. I reckon I can get away with it once in a text. I need to delete any further instance or find an alternative.
Look what I found
Finally; found. I have found everywhere. He found, she found, they found. It’s a wishy-washy catch-all verb that hides the true subject, verb and object of the sentence. My characters find things on a regular basis. Even when they’re not looking. Usually whatever comes after found is the real active part of the sentence. Which of these is stronger?
- She found Danaan working at the back of the mine entrance.
- Danaan worked at the back of the mine entrance.
She (Jovanka) isn’t the subject of the sentence. This is her established PoV, we don’t need the lead-in. It contributes nothing. We’re interested in what Danaan is doing.
The Long and Winding Road
The deeper I go in the edit, the more I find. It’s a life-long journey. On the positive side, Book One is the earliest and dirtiest of my drafts. More recent prose shows much more craft. I’m hanging on to that thought while I wrestle the shapeless mass of prose in this short text.